8.31am: We've got a plethora of politics today. We've already had Eric Pickles on the Today programme - I'll post a full summary soon - and Nick Clegg is about to go on LBC. We've also got a press conference from Mervyn King. And of course PMQs. Here's a full list:

10.30am: Lord Jay of Ewelme, the chairman of the Lords appointments commission, gives evidence to the Lords constitution committee.

11.30am: Peers start debating the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill again. The bill was amended in the Commons yesterday, and today the bill will go back and forth between the two houses until they reach agreement.

12pm: Prime minister's questions.

12.30pm: MPs start an opposition day debate on youth unemployment. Later there will be an opposition day debate on the military covenant.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at about 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm.

8.39am: Nick Clegg is on LBC now. Nick Ferrari started by asking him what one thing he would have done differently over the last nine months or so. Clegg said he should have been a "bit more compelling" when it came to explaining his tuition fee policy. I thought the answer was obvious - he should not have signed the National Union of Student pledge about tuition fees - but Clegg must have been thinking about mistakes since the general election. On tuition fees, he said the new system would make going to university "cheaper and easier" in many ways.

8.45am: On the alternative vote, Nick Ferrari asked Nick Clegg how he felt about the way no campaigners are trying to exploit Clegg's unpopularity. Clegg said if that they were "playing the man, not the ball", that was a sign of the weakness of their arguments.

8.49am: The second question to Nick Clegg from a listener is about the aid budget. Why is Britain still giving money to India? Clegg says the government has taken money away from some countries. But giving money to alleviate poverty is a good thing, he says. It helps the UK, because it reduces the threat to security.

8.54am: Another caller asks Nick Clegg about the cut in child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers, and, in particular, about the way a family with one earner earning £45,000 will lose out, while a family with two parents earning £40,000 will not lose out.

• Clegg said he backed the Big Society. It took Nick Ferrari a while to get Clegg to use the phrase, but eventually he coughed up. "Of course I support the concept of the Big Society," he said. Clegg was happier defending the concept than the name itself. He said it "speaks for something that runs quite deep in the British psyche", namely the desire not to be told what to do.

• Clegg admitted he does not do "a huge amount" of volunteering himself. I took that as a euphemism for none. He said that, with three young children and a job as deputy prime minister, he did not have a lot of time on his hands. He had quite a funny reply when Ferrari suggested he should be running the local pub too. Clegg said he would not be a particularly good candidate because he would have to spend all his time behind the bar defending the tuition fees policy.

9.35am: The unemployment figures are out. Here are the Press Association news snaps.• Unemployment increased by 44,000 in the three months to December to 2.49 million, official figures showed today.

• The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance increased by 2,400 last month to 1.46 million, said the Office for National Statistics.

• Average earnings increased by 1.8% in the year to December, 0.3% down on the previous month.

The unemployment rate for the three months to December 2010 was 7.9 per cent, up 0.1 on the quarter. The total number of unemployed people increased by 44,000 over the quarter to reach 2.49 million. The unemployment rate for those aged from 16 to 24 increased by 1.5 on the quarter to reach 20.5 per cent, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992. The number of unemployed 16 to 24 year olds increased by 66,000 on the quarter to reach 965,000, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992. The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance (the claimant count) increased by 2,400 between December 2010 and January 2011 to reach 1.46 million. The number of male claimants has fallen for twelve consecutive months but the number of female claimants has increased for seven consecutive months. The total number of male claimants fell by 5,400 on the month to reach 1.01 million in January 2011 but the number of female claimants increased by 7,800 to reach 449,200, the highest figure since October 1996. The number of women aged between 25 and 49 claiming Jobseeker's Allowance increased by 6,600 on the month to reach 244,500, the highest figure since comparable records for this series began in 1997.

9.46am: The ONS figures seem to show unemployment going up. But, according to the Department for Work and Pensions, unemployment is "stabilising". It has put out a press release. Here's an extract.

The figures published by the Office for National Statistics show a rise in unemployment of 44,000 (ILO measure) when measured across the whole of the last quarter. But by December the labour market had stabilised and saw a fall of 6,000 on the quarterly figure published last month. They also show a small rise in the number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance. The news follows more encouraging economic data for services and manufacturing.

And here's a statement from Chris Grayling, the employment minister.

It's been a difficult few months in the labour market but things do now seem to be stabilising. The rise in the number of vacancies is particularly encouraging. The challenge for us now is to push ahead with our welfare reforms as quickly as possible so we start to move more people off benefits to take advantage of those vacancies.

Anyway, back to the interviews. Here are the main points. I've taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

• He said his plan would not affect headteachers earning more than £100,000 a year. "Headteachers are not caught up in this, because they're employed by the school," he said.

• He dismissed the suggestion that cutting top salaries will not protect services because the sums of money involved are relatively minor in relation to the overall level of cuts.

I think you've got to bear in mind this: certainly talking about chief officers' salaries, it's also a question of leadership. If they take a cut in pay, it's a demonstration that they are giving priority to frontline services ... Hampshire is saving £7m this year by reducing top officers and I should say Liverpool did a change and they were saving millions of pounds.

• He suggested that there should be more scrutiny of the pay of top civil servants. When it was put to him that MPs should be allowed to decide senior civil servant pay levels if councillors have to approve high salaries in local government, Pickles replied: "I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have this kind of debate in the House of Commons."

• He said the new permanent secretary at the Department for Communities was being paid £50,000 a year less than his predecessor.

The recovery is unlikely to be smooth. Output growth was weaker than expected in the final quarter of last year, and not only because of the effects of the snow. There will be ups an downs in quarter-to-quarter growth rates. But had it not been for snow in December, GDP growth over the course of last year would have been above 2%. And the rebalancing of the economy – necessary to ensure that the recovery is sustainable – is underway. Spending has begun to shift away from consumption – both private and public – towards exports. While consumption is being restrained by the effects of the fiscal consolidation and the squeeze on real incomes, exports are beginning to show the effects of the past depreciation of sterling as well as continuing robust growth in world demand. And investment is beginning to recover from low levels, supported by the strong cash balances in many companies.

11.04am: Here's some more reaction to the unemployment figures. (See 9.35am, 9.42am and 9.46am.)

From Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary

What we see in today's figures is that private sector employment is dead flat. But of course public sector employment is coming down sharply. In the figures we saw this morning, the number of vacancies is only up by about 40,000 across the economy. That means there are still five people chasing every single job, and in a hundred constituencies, ten people chasing every job.

It simply beggars belief that the government is cutting a quarter of a million places from its work programme. We were promised the biggest, boldest work programme in our country's history. I'm afraid this morning that looks like another broken promise.

From Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary

Young people were hit hardest by the recession and today's figures show they are suffering in our so-called recovery too ... The truth is that no amount of restructuring benefits will deal with the fact that there are simply not enough jobs to go around. Without a proper growth strategy, the tragedy of mass unemployment will be with us for many years to come.

From David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce

It is particularly worrying that the number of people who are working part-time because they could not find a full-time job, and the number of young unemployed, both rose to the highest level since records began.

From Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union

The government is failing miserably to get unemployment under control. We need to get Britain working to have any hope of economic recovery. Far from jobs growth fuelling the recovery, the number of jobs fell by a whopping 170,000 in the year to last September.

From Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors

Unemployment is up and employment is down. This really is the feel bad recovery. Thankfully there is no evidence of a wage-price spiral developing, as wage pressure appears to be falling, not rising.

11.23am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are the articles I found particularly interesting.

• Jill Sherman in the Times (paywall) says couples on benefit could get an extra £500 a year if they move in together under plans in the welfare bill being published tomorrow.

Under the current system, a lone parent and his or her partner can claim £67.50 a week each on jobseeker's allowance or income support if he or she is unemployed. But for couples living together it goes down to £105.95 a week.

An aide to Mr Duncan Smith said that in most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries couples living apart would lose only about 25 per cent of combined benefit if they shared a home. In Britain they lose out by more than 35 per cent.

"The aim is to move towards and then reach the OECD figures," said the aide. "We do not believe that couples should keep 100 per cent of their previous payments as the Government recognises that some costs, such as housing, are lower when people move in together. But the point is that we want to end the current disincentive for people to form a stable union. We do not want to encourage people not to live together because they find it is not in their financial interests to do so."

He said that couples would gain about £10 a week or £520 a year when the new changes came in. But the extra cost would be paid for out of reduced fraud and reductions in benefit for those living apart, he added.

• Matthew Norman in the Independent thinks the Big Society is "an amalgam of long irrelevant noblesse oblige and barely less outmoded hippy idealism".

Without the stick of legislation, it's hard to see bankers, or anyone else, falling for the carrot of high-minded oratory. The more frenetically he cleaves to the notion that good intentions can reshape human nature, the more laughable he may come to look on the road to electoral hell.

Loathing is something the gifted politician can live with, and even relish, as Mr Cameron acknowledged on Monday with his hard man embrace of his imminent unpopularity. Ridicule, on the other hand, is almost invariably fatal. If his refusal to ditch the gaseous nonsense makes him feel like an action hero, in fact this mission impossible threatens to brand him irreversibly as a comic turn.

• Gerri Peev in the Daily Mail says the number of people with a gambling problem has risen by 451,000 since Labour liberalised the gambling laws.

The number of problem gamblers has risen since 2007, when the Gambling Act was coming into force, from 0.6 per cent of the population to 0.9 per cent – or 451,000.

Tourism Minister John Penrose said: 'The increase in problem gambling is a direct result of Labour's reckless Gambling Act.

The Treasury has revealed that there are 5,400 people claiming non-domicile tax status who paid £5.9 billion in tax – the equivalent of 1p on the lower and higher rates of income tax.

• James Kirkup in the Daily Telegraph says that around 300 MPs are backing a letter saying that Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority needs to loosen the rules relating to MPs' expenses.

The letter, organised by Adam Afriyie, a Tory backbencher, warns IPSA that its current rules are "untenable" and suggests a radical rethink.

"I and my Parliamentary colleagues, who must ultimately answer to our constituents, will not stand aside while the integrity of MPs, and Parliament, continues to be undermined unnecessarily," Mr Afriyie wrote.

Mr Afriyie said that his letter enjoyed widespread support from backbenchers of all parties. Around 100 members have put their names to it, and another 200 have assured him of their support, he said.

• Alex Barker in the Financial Times (subscription) says a report from the Social Market Foundation says more than 600,000 families could be penalised for saving under the government's plans for universal credit.

Rules to be unveiled in the welfare reform bill this week will prevent working families with children from claiming the new "universal credit" if they have savings of more than £16,000.

Once the system is in place, about 400,000 working families will lose their entitlement altogether, according to calculations by the Social Market Foundation, a think-tank.

A further 200,000 households with more than £6,000 savings will see their benefit docked.

If you think that Britain is at risk of a double-dip recession, think again. As of today, a relapse into recession is not just a risk, it is a near-certainty. Contrary to my earlier expectations, it now looks like the Bank of England will capitulate to City analysts who view a brief period of 4 per cent inflation as a national crisis and will start raising interest rates within the next few months.

The contract for the Queen's Hospital in Romford will be examined by an experienced team of commercial, legal and technical advisors to identify ways of reducing ongoing costs in this contract on behalf of the local NHS Trust. The lessons will then be used to drive savings across the full portfolio of PFI contracts.

11.54am: PMQs is coming up shortly. Afterwards, at 12.30pm, there will be a statement from Theresa May about the proposal to let sex offenders appeal to have their names taken of the sex offenders' register. I'll be blogging both in full.

12.00pm:David Cameron starts with a tribute to three soldiers killed in Afghanistan over the last week.

12.01pm: Labour's John Mann asks about two constituents living in a care home. The fees have gone up £400 a week because the home is being "fatten for privatisation", he says.

Cameron says he will look at this case. But the money going into social care has gone up by £2bn.

12.03pm: Mark Lancaster, a Conservative, asks about a six-year-old constituent with a rare genetic disorder. Her family are trying to raise £200,000 for treatment in Holland. Will Cameron looking into the case. Cameron says he will.

Cameron says the work programme is the biggest back to work scheme seen since the 1930s. On internships, he says Miliband did one for Tony Benn and one for the deputy leader of the Labour party. No wonder he is so leftwing, Cameron says.

12.10pm: In response to a question from Nicholas Soames, David Cameron praises Vince Cable for introducing a "one in, one out" approach to regulation. Is this Cameron's response to the briefing in some Tory papers yesterday saying Cameron was "furious" with Cable's approach to EU regulation.

12.11pm: Cameron says investment in rural broadband is vital.

12.12pm: Ed Miliband gets his second tranche of questions. Is Cameron happy with his flagship policy, the sale of forests.

Cameron replies: "The short answer to that is - no." It is only a consultation, he says.

Miliband says even Cameron must appreciate the irony of the man who made a tree the symbol of the Conservative party selling them off. The consultation is about how to sell forests, not whether to sell them. Will Cameron drop the policy completely?

Cameron says he is having a consultation.

Miliband says it's a ludicrous policy.

Cameron says Miliband wrote his questions before he heard the answers. The bandwagon has hit a tree, he says.

12.15pm: Snap verdict: Dividing the questions worked quite well for Miliband. Cameron tends to save up his best soundbites for use when responding to questions number five and six, and today I got the impression that he had a lot of material about Labour's economic record that he could not use. Miliband may well be right about the privatisation policy heading for the scrapheap, but Cameron responded to the first question on this well using that rare tactic, total honesty. (See 12.12pm.) He should try this more often.

12.21pm: Bernard Jenkin, the Tory chairman of the public administration committee, says his committee is going to hold an inquiry into the Big Society. It's quite unusual to hear a select committee chairman use PMQs as a forum for making an announcement.

12.22pm: Philip Davies, a Conservative, asks about the supreme court ruling saying sex offenders should have the right to appeal to have their names taken off the sex offenders' register.

Cameron gives a substantive answer, containing five key points.• He says he is "appalled" by the supreme court judgment.• He says the government will do "the minimum" necessary to comply with it.

• Sex offenders will be made to report to the authorities if they want to travel abroad, he says. That is because the government is going to tighten various loopholes when it changes the law to comply with the supreme court judgment.

• Sex offenders will not be able to get off the sex offenders' register by changing their name by deed poll.

• The government will announce the commission to investigate the case for a British bill of rights "imminently".

12.28pm: Cameron expresses his support for a House of Commons internship scheme.

12.28pm: Cameron says the universal credit will ensure that people are always better off in work.

12.29pm: Julian Huppert, a Lib Dem, asks when the legislation for the replacement of control orders will be published.

Cameron says he is sure the Commons will be consulted properly.

12.30pm: Cameron says a green paper on special educational needs will be published shortly. He wants to have "a less confrontational system".

12.31pm: Theresa May is now a statement about the sex offenders' register. David Cameron has already given us the main points, I suspect. (See 12.22pm.)

12.32pm: May says the government is "disappointed and appalled" by the supreme court ruling saying sex offenders should have the right to appeal to have their names taken off the sex offenders' register. The government will do "the minimum" possible to comply with it.

The ruling does not mean sex offenders will have their names taken off the register automatically, she says.

In Scotland a new system has already been introduced to comply with the supreme court ruling. Offenders can only appeal after their name has been on the register for 15 years. May says in England and Wales the new rule will be even more strict.

• Sex offenders will only be able to apply to have their names taken off the register 15 years after they have been released. The bar for those appeals will be set "as high as possible". The final decision will be down to the police, not the courts as in Scotland. That decision will be final.

May also says she will tighten loopholes in the sex offenders' register legislation.

• Sex offenders will have to tell the authorities if they are travelling abroad, even for a day.

• They will have to tell the authorities if they are living in a house with a child under 18.

• They will have to report every week on where they can be found if they have no fixed abode.

• The rules will be tightened so that offenders can no longer get off the register by changing their name by deed poll.

May says the government believes that parliament should make the law, not the supreme court.

12.42pm: Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, asks for an assurance that the public will not be put at risk.

12.44pm: In response to Cooper, May stresses that the government does not want to have to give sex offenders the right to appeal to take their names off the sex offenders' register.

12.46pm: Peter Lilley, a Conservative, asks May if she agrees that Britain should withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights. May says she does not want to go down that route.

12.47pm: Jack Straw, the Labour former home secretary, says that under the Human Rights Act there is no obligation on the government to change the law. The supreme court has the power to say that a law is incompatible with the HRA. But section 4 of the Act makes it clear that parliament does not automatically have to change the law to comply with the court's ruling, he says.

May says that parliament does have the final say, and that it will have the final say in this case. (She cleverly avoided answering Straw's point.)

12.49pm: Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, says May has struck "exactly the right tone".

12.50pm: Here are some extracts from Theresa May's statement.

On the supreme court ruling

The supreme court ruled last April that not granting sex offenders the opportunity to seek a review is a breach of their human rights – in particular, the right to a private or family life. These are rights, of course, that these offenders have taken away from their victims in the cruellest and most degrading manner possible. The government is appalled by this ruling – it places the rights of sex offenders above the right of the public to be protected from the risk of re-offending - but there is no possibility of further appeal. This government is determined to do everything we can to protect the public from predatory sexual offenders. And so we will make the minimum possible changes to the law in order to comply with this ruling.

On the power of parliament

I can tell the House today that the deputy prime minister and justice secretary will shortly announce the establishment of a commission to investigate the creation of a British Bill of Rights. For it is time to assert that it is parliament that makes our laws, not the courts; that the rights of the public come before the rights of criminals; and above all, that we have a legal framework that brings sanity to cases such as these.

12.53pm: Theresa May says a senior police officer, like a chief constable, will take the decision about whether or not an offender should stay on the sex offenders' register.

12.54pm: Ian Paisley Jnr asks if victims will be able to appeal against any decision taken by the police to take someone's name off the sex offenders' register.

May says there will be no right to appeal.

12.55pm: Labour's Stephen McCabe congratulates May for rejecting the Scottish approach to complying with the supreme court ruling. Why did she not also reject the Scottish approach to retaining DNA.

May says she is not following the Scottish approach to DNA retention in its entirety.

12.58pm: Labour's Jenny Chapman says sex offenders should have to register their online identities. May says this is a "very valid point". She says she will look into it.

12.59pm: Peter Bone, a Conservative, congratulates May on the fact that her announcement was not leaked in advance. (He obviously has not read the Times, which has splashed on the fact that sex offenders will get the right to try to have their name taken off the register, although the Times story does not have any detail.) May says the announcement was not leaked, except perhaps by the prime minister at PMQs.

1.06pm: Labour's Alan Campbell asks if victims will be consulted before any decision is made. May says she will consider this.

1.06pm: Philip Hollobone, a Conservative MP, says the Human Rights Act does more to protect the rights of "bad people" than the rights of "good people". May says ministers know what Hollobone feels about this.

• Peers have voted by a majority of 62 to impose a clause in the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill saying that the referendum on the alternative vote will not be binding if the turnout is lower than 40%. When peers last voted in favour of the 40% threshold, the majority was just one. This suggests that the Lords could be digging in for a long battle with the Commons as the two Houses play "ping pong" with the bill today. The 40% threshold amendment, tabled by Labour's Lord Rooker, was backed today by 277 votes to 215. The Tories supporting Rooker included former chancellors Lord Lawson of Blaby and Lord Lamont of Lerwick and former cabinet minister Lord Forsyth of Drumlean.

• Theresa May, the home secretary, has announced changes to the rules governing the sex offenders' register. Under the current system anyone jailed for more than 30 months for a sex offence is put on the register for life. Following a supreme court ruling, the government has to give offenders the right to ask to have their names taken off the register. May said she would make the "minimum possible changes" to comply with this ruling and offenders will only be able to ask to come off the register 15 years after their release from jail. But she also announced that various loopholes in the sex offenders' register legislation are being closed. Overall, it is hard to tell whether the system is being toughened or relaxed as a result of today's announcement. In reality, I suspect, most offenders on the register won't be affected either way.

• David Cameron has renewed his attack on the Human Rights Act. Last week he made a suprisingly strong attack on the European Court of Human Rights. Today he seemed to take that one step further, attacking the supreme court. He said he was "appalled" by the court's decision on the sex offenders' register (see above), which was taken on human rights grounds. The government is committed to setting up a commission to investigate whether the HRA should be replaced with a British bill of rights. In the Commons yesterday Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, hinted that this was not a priority for him. But Cameron said today the commission would be set up "imminently".

• Cameron gave his strongest hint yet that he might drop the plan to privatise state-owned forests. At PMQs Ed Miliband asked Cameron if he was happy with his policy on forestry. Cameron replied: "The short answer to that is no." When Miliband challenged him to admit that he would drop the policy, Cameron did not deny it. "What is important is that we should be making sure that whatever happens, we increase access to our forests, we increase biodiversity and we don't make the mistake that was made under the last government where they sold forests with no access rights at all," Cameron said.

•Unemployment has risen according to figures out today. Chris Grayling, the employment minister, said the labour market was stablising. But the TUC's Brendan Barber said: "The truth is that no amount of restructuring benefits will deal with the fact that there are simply not enough jobs to go around." (See 9.35am, 9.42am, 9.46am and 11.04am.)

• Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, has been criticised by the Local Government Association for giving councillors the power to stop local authority executives being paid more than £100,000 a year. Any appointments involving salaries above this level will have to be approved at a meeting where councillors vote in public. "It is right that pay for senior staff in the public sector is subject to scrutiny, but this kind of top-down interference is simply unnecessary. Councils are leading the way in being transparent about all their spending, and many authorities already have remuneration committees with independent members from outside the authority that examine senior salaries," the LGA said.

• The CBI has expressed some concern about a Treasury plan to see if any money can be saved from PFI projects. "The government is right to look at making savings from all avenues as part of its deficit-reduction plans. But it needs to maintain private sector confidence in the market, otherwise it could jeopardise future investment in infrastructure projects," the CBI said. (See 11.46am.)

The prime minister's project has faced a barrage of criticism in recent weeks. We will be looking to separate the inevitable hostility to spending cuts from the positive elements of the Big Society policy ... This is potentially a huge culture change for government and how it goes about the business of government. I don't believe that the Whitehall machine or the civil service has really started to understand the implications of the change which is required.

2.50pm: There's been another surprise in the House of Lords. Peers have voted by 242 to 241 - a majority of one - to accept the government's proposition that, when constituency boundaries are redrawn so that they are of equal size, the maximum variation above or below the average should be 5%. Last week peers voted to allow a variation of 7.5%.

This is a surprise because peers seemed to care much more about 7.5% than they did about the 40% threshold. But now the 40% threshold is the only issue to be resolved. The bill has finished in the Lords and will be back in the Commons later this afternoon. Then it will go back to the Lords. If the Lords refuse to back down over 40%, the ping pong match could go on all night.

3.05pm: Should parliament make the law? Or the courts? Or the people? At PMQs David Cameron was pretty clear. Taking a whack at the supreme court, he said "it's about time we started making sure that decisions are made in this parliament". Theresa May said much the same a few minutes later. But the government will this evening ask MPs to vote against a proposition saying that, when it comes to the alternative vote, parliament should have the final say. The 40% threshold inserted into the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill in the House of Lords today (see 1.30pm) says that if the turnout in the referendum is less than 40%, the vote should be considered advisory. Parliament would have the final say. This would create a huge headache for Cameron, because it means he would come under pressure to ignore the results of a referendum. But it is entirely consistent with his "parliament is supreme" philosophy. How ironic.

3.26pm: The government is going to spend £1m helping disabled people become councillors or MPs. There's a press notice about the plan here, and a consultation document here (pdf). "Disabled people are under-represented in politics, and this package of support will help remedy that," Theresa May, the minister for equalities, says.

3.37pm: The House of Lords is much better at providing information about voting than the House of Commons. On its website, it provides division list analyses, showing how many peers from each party voted for and against, and who they were. Here are the figures for the Rooker 40% threshold vote. Some 27 Tories voted with Labour, as well as one Liberal Democrat.

3.41pm: Here's an afternoon reading list.

• Tom Watson at Labour Uncut says he has discovered a new group of voters on the campaign train in Barnsley - Ed Miliband Tories.

What a difference nine months makes. Ed Miliband Tories feel the rising costs of VAT and inflation – they are particularly hit by high fuel prices as they commute by car. To them, the "big society" is a silly notion, made up by people in London. The idea that the "big society" will replace the public services they have come to rely on does not compute. And, for many, they are in shock that social programmes that they felt were ring-fenced by David Cameron before the election now face the chop.

For young, aspirant families, this means they have been able to benefit from schemes like sure start and book start, which are now being cut. For families with older children, they can't understand how they will afford the huge cost of sending their children away from home for university (there is only limited provision locally).

To this group, Cameron is now seen as a key negative, remote and uncaring. Unlike before the election, he doesn't seem to be talking and listening to ordinary people. They used to see him in the living rooms of people like them, now they just see him jetting around the world.

It's a remarkable turnaround in opinion; one of which I don't believe theConservatives have fully understood the significance. From the conversations I have had in Barnsley, it will be virtually impossible for David Cameron to rebuild the fragile trust that had convinced enough people to make the Tories the largest party last year.

• Paul Goodman at ConservativeHome says that if Britain votes for AV, David Cameron will be in serious trouble with his party.

In short, the cry will be: "First he messes up the election. Now he's messed up the referendum. We'll never govern again on our own - and I'm going to lose my seat."

Even in such circumstances, the Government is unlikely to collapse. Both Tory MPs, furious with the Prime Minister, and Liberal Democrat ones, rejuvenated by a "Yes" vote, would have a common reason not to pull down the pillars of the Coalition temple: both would fear being ousted at the polls.

But Cameron would have lost the confidence of the Parliamentary Party. New, "collective leadership" would be demanded. There'd probably be a Cabinet reshuffle, and not on his terms.

His authority would be weakened and the Government vulnerable to events. Inevitably, there'd be talk of a challenge, but there's no obvious successor. At any rate, the Prime Minister would be in danger of becoming what Nigel Birch once called one of his heroes, Harold Macmillan: the lost leader.

• Paul Waugh on his PoliticsHome blog posts the transcript that shows that Nick Ferrari had to ask four times before he could get Nick Clegg to say he likes the Big Society. (See 9am.)

• Sunder Katwala at Next Left on Andrew Cooper, David Cameron's new director of strategy.

The new director of strategy certainly takes a pretty much diametrically opposed view of why the Tories fell short at the last election to that offered in the ConservativeHome post-election inquest. Cooper strongly supports the thesis that the Conservatives fell short because voters did not feel that they had changed enough - which does indeed cast the Tory party as much more the problem than the solution.

4.10pm: Here's an afternoon summary.

• William Hague has been criticised for suggesting the BNP would benefit from the alternative vote. "Under AV, supporters of extreme parties like the BNP would get their vote counted many times, while people who vote for one of the mainstream candidates would only get their vote counted once," Hague said in a message to Conservative party members. Simon Wooley, the vice chair of Yes to Fairer Votes, said Hague was wrong. "The fact is the BNP are campaigning for a no vote, as their website attests," Wooley said. "The BNP always depend on low turnout and minority support. Under first-past-the-post they have scraped wins in town halls across Britain which would not have been possible under AV."

• Peers have voted to accept the government plan not to allow constituencies to vary in size by more than 5%. That means there is only one issue in the parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill to be resolved between the Commons and the Lords: whether or not the result of the AV referendum should advisory if the turnout falls below 40%. The government is expected to vote down the 40% threshold when the bill returns to the Commons later tonight. But there is no guarantee yet that the Lords will give way.

• John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association, has defended the right of councils to pay high salaries. "These are big jobs," he told BBC News. "The average pay for a senior manager in local government, including chief executives, is £134,000, the same as a cabinet minister, for a complex range of responsibilities managing major services."

• Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader and shadow international development secretary, has launched a campaign to ensure the government does not abandon its promise to spend 0.7% of national income on aid by 2013. "The fact that the two parties of the Tory-led Government agree on the .7/2013 target should not lull anyone into a false sense of security that its achievement is a foregone conclusion," she said. "The new government has already frozen aid for the next two years – that is £2.2bn less for the world's poorest people."